Administrivia

These tasks are to be done prior to the start of observing runs each month:

Launch VNC desktops.

Remote Startup Procedure from home

The procedure for launching VNC desktops from home requires previous installation of the Keck remote observing software. Once the software has been installed:

  1. Open a terminal on your local computer.
  2. Navigate to the directory where the remote observing software was installed.
  3. Launch VNCs with the following command:
    ./start_keck_viewers deimosN

Waimea Startup Procedure

  1. Log in to primary seat.
    1. User: user
    2. Password: See your Staff Astronomer
  2. Launch primary VNC desktops.
    1. Open a terminal
    2. Type: start_all_vnc.sh deimos7 (assuming that your assigned account for the night is deimos7.)

Check conking (not tested after Linux upgrade yet)

Check disk speed

Log into polo (deimosserver) as any DEIMOS numbered account. Check the speed of the disks using the command:

run_test_disk_io_speed
Check the logfile in /s/sdata1004/logs/test_disk_io_speed.log and see whether current I/O speed is in line with previous values. Typical disk I/O time before the upgrade of polo to Linux was 2.1sec. Typical I/O time after the upgrade is 0.7sec if the script is run on polo and nearly 3sec if the script is run on vm-deimos. This test is completely independent of the DEIMOS software and simply tests the time required to write data to disk.

Check image acquisition sequence speed

Start up the DEIMOS software and setup the engineering program ID and observer:

Log into polo (deimosserver) as any DEIMOS numbered account. Check the speed of the image acquisition sequence by running the command:
run_test_goi_time
For each data disk, this will acquire 1 direct-mode bias image with both amplifiers and compute the time to write to disk. Check the resulting output in /sdata1004/logs/test_goi_time.log, which looks like this:
# date		        disk	        n       erase   wcrate  wdisk   total
# ----                  ----            -       -----   ------  -----   -----
2021-May-04 22:03       /sdata1004      1       7.82    30.41   0.15    43.54  
2021-May-04 22:04       /sdata1005      1       7.82    30.11   0.16    43.76  
  
Compare the time required to complete various phases to what it took in the past. If problems are seen, check software and hardware:

Daytime Checkout

These procedures are run during the day to check whether key components of the instrument are working as expected.

Check safety

Phone the summit and verify that DEIMOS is available for moving motors and rotating.

Start a VNC session

See instructions above

Start software

If you have not done it already, input program and observer name

Home stages and apply default configuration

Home rotator

Check CCD shutter

The shutter is cycled automatically when all DEIMOS GUIs are started, but this operation can also be done separately, by issuing the command:

 cycle_shutter -100
In a Linux hosts (polo, vm-deimos or roto) xterm as any DEIMOS numbered account. The shutter generally fails to open for several iterations if it has not recently been exercised. The script will run the shutter until it opens successfully up to a maximum of 100 times. If the last attempt succeeds, then the shutter should be ok.

Detector checkout

Adjust science CCD bias

See procedure to adjust the science CCD video offsets.

Check CCD parameters

See procedure to measure the science CCD gain and readout noise.

Check internal lamps

Check FCS lamps

Check dewar focus values